First came across this internet balloon race campaign in 2008. And Orange is launching it again this year!

Brilliant idea to make use of internet ‘mileage’ as the basis of competition. In 2008, 40,000 players picked a balloon (shaped like one of the Orange tariff animals) and set them free, floating across over 1,500 websites that had signed on to become part of the digital journey across the web, clocking up a whopping 63 million online miles.

‘In an age of related links and contextualisation, it’s nice to fly over websites that have no relationship to each other, other than they’re part of an epic race across the internet.’ Benjamin Tomlinson, creative director at Poke.

And I just found out – my favourite 2 social media campaigns of all time – Old Spice and Orange Balloonacy, were both developed by the same creative director – Iain Tait.